Valentin's Blog

I just realized that I never actually published my PhD thesis to this blog. This of course is an negligence that needs to be corrected .. so, embedded below is the (German) summary presentation. I've made the actual (English) document available here. 

I just have a sweet spot for technologies/tools that bring a new visual and immersive dimension to the web (see here for an earlier article). Hence I wanted to share a reference to 360cities - not that new, but a great way to immerse yourself into cities and places near and far. Have a look - embedded below you'll find a panorama of Venice. Hit full screen, note that controls at the bottom of the screen allow you to navigate to other panoramas close by and enjoy :)

Videos from Sony and Microsoft give a glimpse into the future of gaming (that seems set to be dominated by Wii inspired controllers that allow to use ever more body movements to control the game). If you have any interest in gaming at all, you'll enjoy the two videos below.

The first is the video from the demo of the Sony system which still relies on specially marked objects but seems to be extremely precise. The demo is really fun to watch. Sadly embedding is not allowed, but you can watch it on the bbc website.

The other is Microsoft's Project Natal, an extension for the XBox360 that seems to rely exclusively on image recognition (and voice and speech recognition) - no controllers (Microsoft tag line is "You are the controller"), no specially marked objects. This video is embedded below or here on YouTube.

Always wanted to build a Mashup using AI Technology? Already have one? Why not participate in our AI-Mashup Challenge 2009, win up to 1500€, software or books and meet nice people.

Seriously, together with Brigitte and Pascal I'm organizing an AI Mashup challenge / camp that will be co-located with the KI 2009 (Germany's prime AI conference). Would be great if you wanted to join us - its sure going to be fun.

The deadline for submissions is the 15th of July - so you still have more than 6 weeks to build your Mashup!

You can read more about the contest here.

See you there!

An overview of current research topics in service orientation (SO) from a technology oriented point of view. The presentation also gives a glimpse of what we (the FZI and in particular the group of Professor Thai) are doing in this area of SO in particularly with respect to cloud computing.

I presented these slides at the SOA symposium of the BITKOM organization (a large German intra-trade organization in the IT sector). The other (often interesting but all German) slides from this event can be found here.

Excuse the long break in posting - but I was traveling for a few weeks.